Summer of Salt

by Katrina Leno

  “Why do I care so much that Annabella is late?” I’d asked, pulling myself up to a sitting position and sipping the drink.

  “She’s a part of our history, whether we like it or not,” my mother had said. “The Fernweh women are all related. What happens to one of us happens to all of us.”

  “You don’t mean . . .” We had never directly acknowledged it, that this bird might actually be my great-great-great-namesake’s sister. It was hinted at heavily, sure, but never confirmed nor denied.

  “My second cousin could turn into a black cat,” my mother had said, as if that answered everything. She’d bent over to kiss my forehead and then slipped the mug out of my hands; I was already falling asleep, so strong was her magic.

  “Anyway,” Lucille was saying now, “I don’t love that she’s late either, but I’m not quite ready to panic. We’ll all be laughing about this at the festival, just you wait.”

  Held three weeks exactly from the solstice, the festival started at six in the evening and ran well into the night. In theory it was a celebration of our island’s founding, but in actuality, it was called the Fowl Fair, and I think we can agree on what we were really celebrating.

  Yes, Annabella had her own festival.

  “I look forward to it every year,” Lucille continued, taking a bite of her muffin. “I just hope the little darling shows up in time.”

  “You should play a little hard to get. Maybe that’ll piss her off and she’ll come looking for you,” Mary said—I hadn’t noticed her come into the dining room. She stood in the doorway, looking pissed off herself, but I doubted that it had anything to do with the birdheads’ concerns.

  “Ha! You’re funny, Mary,” Lucille said, and she took her muffin and wandered off. She had a habit of doing that, wandering in and out of rooms and conversations like she’d never quite grasped the concept of saying hello and good-bye.

  “What’s your problem?” I asked when Mary had joined me at the table.

  “It’s been three days, and I haven’t made out with Harrison Birdface yet,” she said, scowling.

  “I believe his last name is Lowry. And also, he’s a birdhead. He doesn’t care about kissing girls; he cares about Annabella.”

  “He could care about both.”

  “There’s no precedent.”

  “There’s no precedent because there’s never been an attractive birdhead before,” Mary argued. She had a point. “What about his sister? Any luck there?”

  Actually, Prue had been about as absent as Annabella. I hadn’t seen so much as the back of her head since the inn’s opening night party.

  I shrugged. Mary sighed loudly.

  “We’re both losers,” she said.

  “I don’t think not having makeout partners makes us losers,” I said.

  “First of all, it does. Second of all, I have plenty of makeout partners.”

  “What’s it like being so popular? Like just the most popular little flower in the whole world?”

  “It’s really nice,” she said seriously.

  And then, like Lucille, she wandered away.

  Having exhausted all hope of further conversation, I decided to ride my bike to the town square and visit Vira at Ice Cream Parlor.

  The town square of By-the-Sea was actually more like a rectangle, and it was the only place on the island where, looking east, west, north, or south, you couldn’t see any water. There was a gazebo and a small playground on the northern end and a farmers’ market at the southern end on Sundays. All around the green were the shops and eateries and businesses of the island: the post office, Used Books, Joel’s Diner, Ice Cream Parlor, the coffee shop (named Coffee Shop, because apparently we’re really boring), etc. The high school and lower-grade schools were at the northern tip of the square, and the town hall was at the southern tip. It was a five-minute bike ride to reach Ice Cream Parlor, the ice cream and candy parlor owned by Vira’s mom, Julia Montgomery.

  It was Vira’s dream, once her mother retired, to take over the business and rename it Skull & Cone. Already she experimented with making her own flavors, slipping them next to the normal stock so customers had a choice between Dutch Chocolate, Vanilla, Strawberry, Pistachio, and Broken Hearts of Lovers (one of her recent creations, which was basically just raspberry and cream and an unexpected dash of cardamom).

  I arrived at Ice Cream Parlor at eleven, right when they were opening. Vira wore her unreasonably cute candy-striper outfit (plus white apron and matching hat!) and was busy setting out the ice cream labels next to their corresponding buckets of ice cream.

  “Hi, Vi,” I said.

  “Oh, I’m sorry, are we still friends? Are we talking now? Do we know each other? Did we have a class together once or something?” Vira said. “First you ditch book club and then you haven’t come to see me in three whole days.”

  “Vira, you know how busy the first days of the season are,” I said. “I thought of you every minute.”

  She shrugged, too elbow-deep in ice cream to argue much. “What do you want while I’m in here?”

  “Could I have a Bloody Sundae please?”

  That was another Vira original, consisting of whatever her flavor of the day was (today: Lies of Our Elders) with plenty of strawberry syrup and whipped cream on top. She made two and joined me at one of the parlor’s little tables.

  I could tell even before Vira opened her mouth what she was about to ask me, so I beat her to it. “I haven’t seen her since the party. Also good to keep in mind: we don’t even know if she likes girls.”

  Vira took a thoughtful bite of her gray-and-white-swirled ice cream. “Well, let me just say that Colin Osmond was also sitting on a bench overlooking the very romantic ocean and moonlight thing that was going on, and she chose to sit with you and not him. And everybody says Colin is the cutest boy on the island. I guess. Right?”

  Vira didn’t pay much attention to gossip like that, especially when it came to romantic stuff (she was, as she’d once put it, “as aroace as they come”), so it was kind of charming that Colin was still on her radar, at least as far as his island sex symbol status was concerned.

  I thought about this for a moment. Given the choice between Colin and me, Prue had picked me. “And he was really sitting alone on a bench?”

  “Alone, yes.”

  “And she picked my bench instead?”

  “She made a beeline right toward you. We can’t be sure yet whether or not she wants to kiss your face, but your chances are looking up.”

  “I knew there was a reason I liked you,” I said.

  “My sage, sage wisdom. And also my ice cream,” Vira said.

  “And also your ice cream, yes.”

  I took a circuitous route back to the inn, because it was a beautiful day and the sooner I got back, the sooner my mother would find something for me to do. Mary and I didn’t have shifts so much as we had two months of being at our mother’s beck and call. But it was worth it, as she often reminded us, because in return we got food and shelter and the occasional magic potion.

  I ran into a small herd of birdheads just south of the town square, milling about in the parking lot of the town hall (Annabella had once nested on top of a streetlamp there).

  “Anything yet?”

  Tank Smith, busy setting up a complicated-looking tripod and camera, looked over and scowled. “Nothing at all. Not so much as a feather.”

  “Oh, she’s here all right,” Henrietta Lee chimed in, adjusting her thick glasses on her face. She had a set of binoculars hanging around her neck that were bigger than my head. “I can feel her. Can’t you feel her, Liesel?”

  Liesel held a series of instruments I couldn’t even begin to guess the use of. They were small, metallic, and had a trio of glass balls attached to them, each filled with a different color liquid. She harrumphed at being addressed, but didn’t offer anything in the way of an opinion. By Liesl’s feet, her birdcat, Horace, regarded me with a look of distrust. I gave him a little wave.

 
; “Well, let me know if you find anything,” I said.

  “You will be the first to know, Georgina,” Tank said. He raised his enormous camera and snapped a photo of me before I could protest. Then, looking at the little screen, which no doubt showed my unready camera face, he added, “Ah. Strange to imagine where all the years have gone. I remember when you were just a babe.”

  The birdheads—especially the older ones like Tank and Henrietta—were prone to random bouts of reminiscing; I took that as my cue to leave. I waved to Tank and the rest of them and went on my way.

  Without really meaning to, I ended up at the graveyard. The one graveyard on By-the-Sea was small and old and quiet—a few of my favorite things. I got off my bike, left it leaning against a tree, and walked deeper into the crooked rows of graves.

  In the graveyard, it always seemed to be late autumn.

  The perfect season for graveyards.

  The dead trees had spilled their dry leaves all over the grass, and they’d billowed against the tombstones in big piles.

  I found her sitting on a bench outside one of the mausoleums. Prue. Of course. She held a red cardboard box of fries from Joel’s Diner.

  In the few days since I’d seen her, I’d kind of forgotten how pretty she was, and now it hit me all over again. She wore a dark-green sundress, and her hair was tied with a silk scarf. She had red sunglasses on, even though it wasn’t that bright out.

  I walked up the steps to the mausoleum, clearing my throat to announce my presence, because I didn’t know a ton about flirting, but I knew terrifying someone in the middle of a graveyard probably wasn’t the best approach.

  She looked up and maybe smiled a little, maybe happy to see me? Or else just really happy with the fries, which was possible, because Joel made some really good fries.

  “Hi,” I said.

  “Hi, Georgina,” she replied. She patted her hand on the bench beside her. I guess benches were now my favorite pieces of furniture, taking the place of beds and rocking chairs. I sat.

  “I haven’t seen you around much. There aren’t many places to hide on By-the-Sea; you’re talented,” I said.

  Oh wait.

  Was that creepy or cute? I couldn’t immediately tell.

  Prue laughed a little and put the fries on the bench between us. “I’ve been spending a lot of time in the library,” she said.

  “The library? In summer? Why?”

  “I like books,” Prue said. “And we had to pack light, so I couldn’t bring any. And the library dude is really strict; he won’t let me check anything out because I’m ‘not a By-the-Seathian, and therefore ineligible to acquire a library card.’” She paused, considered. “Do you guys really call yourselves that? By-the-Seathians?”

  “Oh, absolutely not. Stevie is the only one. And he’s a stickler for those book rules.” Stevie Carmichael, the librarian, acted like he wasn’t guarding books, but lives.

  “Good. I mean, it’s actually a little cute. This whole island is a little cute, you know?” she said.

  “How do you mean?”

  “Like . . . the one inn, the one diner, the one ice cream parlor, the whole town-green situation. An actual gazebo. A beach called the Beach. A mysterious ladybird whose absence so far has made my brother very anxious.”

  “When you put it that way . . .”

  “It’s like a different world here. A very quaint, sort of creepy world.”

  “Creepy?”

  “No offense,” she said quickly. “I’ll shut up now.”

  “No, please, don’t shut up.” Never shut up, never leave my sight, let’s move into the graveyard together, some of the mausoleums could actually be pretty homey with the right amount of sprucing. It was just so easy to talk to Prue, like she was a complete open book. And she was funny, and interesting, and her smile was like a small revelation. Like she had invented smiling.

  “I didn’t mean creepy in a bad way,” Prue insisted. “I just meant . . . it’s like a storybook. Sort of dark, sort of cute, a little too perfect. Take this graveyard, for instance.”

  “What about it?” I asked.

  “Well, I mean . . . it’s fall,” Prue said. “It is literally fall in this graveyard. Brisk air and fallen leaves, and that smell. Does that make any sense?”

  “I’m sure it’s just a geographical anomaly,” I said. “You know, how like some cities are always gray and rainy? I’m sure it’s just in some weird position on the island. And so it makes it seem . . .” I paused. I didn’t know if eternally autumn graveyards were strange or normal or not. “I’ve never been anywhere else,” I admitted, in way of an answer: I don’t know any better.

  “Really? You’ve never been off the island?”

  “Nope,” I said. “I mean—I’ll be leaving in two months, for college. So that will be my first time.”

  “Wow,” Prue said, taking a bite of fry and chewing it thoughtfully.

  “I know. It’s weird, right?”

  “I don’t want to say it’s weird,” Prue said carefully. She looked at me out of the corner of her eye and laughed nervously. “All right, it’s a little weird, yes. But I’ve done weird things too! I traveled across the ocean to help my brother chase after a bird. So we’ve both done weird things.”

  I thought of the weird things I’d done over the course of my life.

  When I was eight I’d had to untangle my sister’s hair from the branches of the tree she’d floated into.

  When I was ten I’d helped my mother mix a tincture that would make the roses that vined up the side of the inn bloom overnight.

  When I was twelve, the year my grandmother died, I sat by her deathbed as she spun hay into gold and told me to put it toward my college fund.

  When I was seventeen, I met a girl who’d traveled the world and had the kind of hair you wanted to just touch, just see what it felt like, and who when she talked to you stared so intently into your face that you felt just the tiniest bit like you were going to catch on fire.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” I said. “I’ve had a pretty normal life until now.”

  Prue ate the last fry and moved the empty container to her other side. I could smell her hair; it mixed with the salt and the magic on the air and made something new, something unique.

  “I don’t think anything about your life is normal,” Prue said quietly, a little distractedly, like her mind was on something else entirely. After a minute she looked at me and asked, “Do you want to do something tonight? I’ve been hanging out with Harrison a little too much. I love my brother, but he’s currently only able to talk about one thing.”

  “One bird thing?” I asked, trying to ignore the irritating hammer of my heart and the imminent spike of my expectations, trying to remind myself that more likely than not, Prue was straight and just wanted to be friends.

  “One bird thing,” she confirmed. “I’ll find you around the inn later? If you’re free?”

  “Sure,” I said quickly. “Sure, I’m free.”

  “Great.”

  She smiled, picked up her trash, and left me alone in the graveyard to dissolve into a puddle of actual sunshine.

  With Verity gone, I was one of only four out lesbians on our very small island. Two of them—Bridgett and Alana Lannigan—were in their sixties and had been happily married for thirty-five years. Wisteria Jones was a year younger than I, and while a perfectly nice girl, there had never been a spark between us. Same with Sally Vane, a bisexual girl in Wisteria’s class, and Polly Horvath, who was two years younger and had dated both Sally Vane and Sally’s second cousin, Marcus.

  But here was the problem with all of that—because I knew everyone on the island so intimately, had grown up with all of them, Prue was basically the first girl I had met who was a mystery. Did she like boys? Girls? Both? Neither? I could only guess, which was proving to be hugely irritating.

  Was this what it was going to be like off the island? In two months, when I left for college, was my entire dating life going to be a constant
cycle of guessing and getting let down? And although I felt accepted here, I couldn’t help but wonder about life elsewhere. Would the people at my college be as accepting as the people on By-the-Sea? Would I know how to do this better? To navigate the weird is-this-a-date-or-isn’t-it?

  Because even now, even as I reminded myself over and over again that what was happening tonight was probably not a date, I could feel the sloppy smile plastered across my face, the highest of hopes building in my chest.

  Mary noticed it the second I walked into her bedroom (she was reading comics in her underwear in the middle of the day, hiding from our mother). She made a long, drawn-out noise in the back of her throat that sounded a little bit like she was choking.

  “Gross, you have a date with her, don’t you? It’s not fair that you have a date and I don’t. I’m prettier.”

  She probably was prettier, although as far as womb-sharers go, we really couldn’t look less alike.

  “It’s not a date. Have you tried being forward?” I asked, though even as I said it I remembered who my sister was and, duh, of course she’d tried being forward.

  “I all but took my clothes off in the dining room and climbed up on his table to perform a jig,” Mary said. Then, raising a hand to her chin: “Do you think that would work?”

  “I think that would accomplish many things, yes, including Mom banishing you from the island and burning your name off our family tree.”

  “But at least I’d have a date,” Mary said, like she wasn’t ruling it out.

  “I don’t even know why you like him so much. Is it just because he’s fresh blood?”

  Mary wrinkled her nose. “That’s a decidedly gross way to put it, Georgie.”

  “But you’re not saying no . . .”

  “I’m not saying no,” she agreed. “There are only so many people on this island, as you are well aware. It’s nice to have a couple new faces around here.”

  “So . . . just go up to him and ask him if he wants to get a coffee or an ice cream or take a stroll on the beach or something. What’s the worst that can happen?” I sat on the edge of Mary’s bed and started flicking absently through a comic.

  “Every time I see him he has his nose buried in a book about birds. These fucking people, I tell you. Up to their eyeballs in feathers. What do they do for the rest of the year? Sit around and pine for Annabella?”